JohnOPR

Columbo, Season 5, Final Episode

I'm wondering if anyone besides me watched the final episode of "Columbo", Season 5, "Last Salute to the Commodore" and thought that Peter Falk almost over-acted his character in that episode. He seemed to exaggerate Columbo's eccentricities to the point that he was unbelieveable. At least, it seemed that way to me. All this said, I am an ardent "Columbo" fan and really hope those season sets keep coming.

Bob Hug

Re: Columbo, Season 5, Final Episode

Amazon is showing a November 14th date for the combined release of seasons 6 & 7. It's up for pre-order now.

Dave Scarpa

Re: Columbo, Season 5, Final Episode

Well the show does get progressively worse as it goes on, the best shows were the first 4 seasons. The Later stuff especially those awfull TV Moves "Columbo Goes to College" etc were not great.

My DVD Collection

The Megaplex

Jeff#

Re: Columbo, Season 5, Final Episode

"Last Salute to Commodore" can be blamed on the writer Jackson Gillis as well as Patrick McGoohan, who directed it (although he didn't act in that particular episode). McGoohan had appeared on COLUMBO several times between 1974 and 2002. During the 5th season his most outstanding performance was in "Identity Crisis", in which he played a spy who murders Leslie Nielsen.

There were a number of entertaining episodes of the new series too, although I agree overall the original show was better. I think the big problem with the ABC Mystery Movie version is that Peter Falk was in his 60s and 70s by that time, and just too old to be playing a police detective. Another drawback was the producers got too many old-time actors out of retirement on a weekly basis, and the demographic was clearly an older audience.